Thailand Part 1: Bangkok

Wat Arun, across the river from our hotel

We are back safe and sound from our adventures in Thailand and we had an awesome time.

Our trip started off in the capitol of Bangkok where we arrived in the final day of the Thai New Years celebration. While this probably involves some religious and more formal aspects, the element that we noticed most was that the entire city turned into a gigantic water fight. We first noticed this in the cab from the airport while at a stop light. There were these two 7-9 year old kids on the corner with buckets of water and huge smiles on their faces. Whenever someone would drive by on a scooter, or an open taxi called a, Tuk-Tuk, the kids would douse them with the buckets.

We saw this repeated over the course of the entire drive. Many people had adjusted to this by riding around in their bathing suits.

Hooligans, spraying passersby

Additionally, there was a lot of foot traffic on the main roads and a large percentage of the pedestrians were armed with all shapes and sizes of waterguns and buckets. Everyone was involved from 5 year old kids holding guns that were bigger than they were to seniors, sitting on folding chairs, spraying passersby.

Gotcha!

All of this led to a jovial atmosphere, everyone was soaked and smiling including Amy and I.

Superior firepower

We eventually armed ourselves and returned fire but probably should have brought a firehose.


We also attended to nights of Muay Thai Fights at the major venue in Bangkok, Lumpini Stadium. The first night was adult men fighting and the quality of the fights was the highest we had seen after attending similar events in the US and Australia.

Knockout!

The second night was bouts between teenagers from 14 on up. The fights were as good as the night before and although it was odd to see kids fighting without any special protective gear this made no difference to the competitors. There were a number of knockouts both nights.


We also took some time to visit some of the major historical sites in the city, going to the Grand Palace and the temples in the surrounding complex as well as an older style temple in Wat Arun.


The craftsmanship and architecture of these sites was amazing and unlike anything we had seen before. They had an extremely high level of detail in the ornamentation of the buildings with many intricate patterns repeated over a large scale.

At the Grand Palace

At Wat Arun

FEED MEEEEE!!!!

Off to Thailand!!!

Tomorrow Amy and I depart for 10 days in Thailand. We have heard nothing but good things about the southeast asian nation and are greatly looking forward to it.


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While there we will be diving in the Similian Islands and plan on watching the national sport of Muay Thai.


We will post pictures and video when we return, woo hoo!!!

Summer Camping 2: Port Stephens

One Mile Beach. Beautiful.

Towards the end of summer, we decided to have another go at fishing up in the Port Stephens/Seal Rocks area after our last failed attempt. We ventured up on a Friday evening with James and Debs not far behind. The race was on.

We camped at the amazing One Mile Beach Holiday park:

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Like our last camp ground at Treachery, this had its own beach. Unlike the last camp ground, you could go into the water without worrying about being dragged out to sea.

We made the most of this, bodysurfing and swimming for hours both days. The waves were perfect, medium sized but powerful and cleanly breaking. I actually rode across the face of a wave for a short period in a barrel for the first time, this was sublime.

On saturday, after a breakfast of chocolate-bannana pancakes and bodysurfing, we ventured out on a fishing charter via Pacific Blue Charters out of Port Stevens.

Amy, fishing for all womankind

This was a large boat with a knowledgable crew of typical chauvanistic Aussie blokes running the operation. The general attitude was that we were lucky to have the opportunity for them to share their boat with us.

Once we got out to the fishing site, we got geared up. Apparently they couldn't tell Debs and Amy apart either, as they continually called both of them, "doll". Goodonya, mate.

Amy defied them by catching more fish than the other 8 people on the boat combined for a total of 6 teraglin, 1 rock cod, and 1 flathead. James, Debs, and I caught 3 other fish over the course of the day.

The teraglin was something new to us, we had never seen these fish before. They fought most similarly to jewfish, which we catch regularly in Sydney.

At one point, the crew shouted out to the rest of the boat, "whose girlfriend is that in the back corner, I bet you're not bringing her fishing again". The doll they were talking abiut was Amy.

Response, "Are you kidding, if she keeps catching fish, I am going to bring her every time!"

What victory looks like

Anyways, with more fish than we could possibly eat, we ended up giving most of it away to the hapless charter-ees that were significantly less successful than our troupe.

We ended up cooling some with dill and lemon and the rest in a curry sauce. Mmmmmmm good.

Overall, it was a great trip. The campsite was nice and had a great beach and the fishing was leagues more successful than our previous abortive attempt. We left happy and stopped for ice cream on the way home, the perfect conclusion to any trip.

It's been a good week

The first autumn swell has hit and the waves have been massive this week. Good enough that 10X world champion surfer Kelly Slater was in the area earlier in the week. We managed to go bodysurfing 2 days after work and had some great rides both times. On top of that, Amy's parents arrived on Thursday and brought many gifts from America with them, including a new camera from Chris' mom and dad.

The above picture was taken with the new camera on Friday evening before going out for dinner and drinks as the sun was setting. The double rainbow was actually so big that I could not get it in a single frame. I took several photos and put them together with Photostitch.

We are off tomorrow for boating and fishing with the Legrands and then if the weather holds out, some hiking on Sunday.

Summer Camping: Seal Rocks

Summertime in Australia has been Bea-u-ti-ful and we have been taking advantage of the great outdoors this summer. Amy and I took a camping trip up to Seal Rocks, about 3 hours North of Sydney to try out the fishing there.


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We stayed at Treachery Beach, a great location and awesome campground. The beach itself is an incredible sight. From the campground, you hike over a 6 story sand dune and at the crest, the whole horizon is taken up by huge, perfect waves, broad, pristine beach, and massive cliffs.

Treachery Beach, deserted and beautiful.

It is a wild, ocean beach in every sense.


We hiked up and down it, watching incredible displays of surfing prowess and even saw for the first time in person, people tow-in surfing. This is a technique used to catch large waves using a boat or jet-ski to get the surfer up to speed and in the perfect spot for the wave.

Sweet wave

Tow-in!!!!

The next day, we ventured over to Seal Rocks to try fishing off of the cliffs. This was not meant to be. We had brought the rubber boat and motor and planned to troll around. The waves didnt look big from shore but once on the water it quickly became apparent that if we continued, we would capsize or simply sink the boat. Not far from shore, we got turned sideways and were thrown out of the boat. Sunglasses were lost, and someone got fishooked during the forced evacuation.

It was not one of our prouder moments and no, there are no pictures of it.

We settled for taking the boat to a lake in the area and napped/fished in more placid conditions.


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Bluey's Beach

On our last day, we stopped on the way home at Bluey's Beach. This was a locals beach in an area that is not very populated. We were once again treated to some impressive surfing and beautiful waves breaking off of the point nearest to us.

Ejected out of the barrel, so cruel

On the other hand, this guy is absolutely killing it. Win.

Treachery was a great place to spend some time and we look to go back there when we can have some calmer conditions to avenge ourselves.

Interested in camping or survival?  Come check out The Bug Out Bag Guide.

Wedding Gift: Deep Sea Fishing

We recently took a deep sea fishing trip to Brown's Mountain, a sea mount about 45 kilometers off of Sydney courtesy of our friends Ray and Jenn.

They gave us an awesome wedding present via Adrenaline, a company that offers experience from cooking classes to skydiving in Australia.

Thanks guys, you rock!!!

We managed to catch a shark, pictured above and saw a bunch of dolphins jumping around and infront of the boat. We were close enough to them that we could hear them squeaking to each other in the water.

The shark we marinated in soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and vodka and barbecued up for our friends. It was mmmmmmmm.


Sweet, thanks guys.

Visitor #1: James Legrand - Part 2

James with a frosty one

One of the other adventures we took James on while he was with us was to take a local SCUBA dive. We were originally supposed to do a wreck dive up the coast but due to rough conditions brought on by a strong southerly swell, we were rescheduled to dive the Queenscliff Bombura (which I have written about here) and North Head, which is the northern arm at the entrance to Sydney Harbor.

North Head:

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The diving was good and we saw lots of fish including Morwongs, cuttlefish, wobbegong sharks, leatherjackets, blue groper, snapper, and puffer fish. It was also cool to dive the Bombie, something I have seen the effect of on the surface but never been able to investigate the cause of that massive wave. It was amazing to see so much sea live just minutes from where we live. You can see Manly in the video which was taken from the boat.

James flashing the "Still Not Drowning" signal

About to go under at North Head

During the surface interval between dives, we were treated to watching the coast guard doing training of helicopter rescues. That was pretty cool.